If you spend enough time with Rachel McAdams, it’s easy to get lost in the pleasure of her company, or at least become enjoyably distracted. Effortlessly likable, she has a way of keeping you tethered to her character even when your attention begins to wander. Such is the case in “Morning Glory,” a passably amusing romantic comedy with a laugh-strewn script that’s almost undone by the hard sell of an enterprise that drills every emotional beat into your head, an approach that suggests that the filmmakers see their audiences less as viewers with thinking brains and more as patients with thick skulls.

Ms. McAdams plays the title attraction in “Morning Glory,” Becky Fuller, a television news producer whose million-dollar twinkle and repertory of choreographed tics — she flutters and stammers and occasionally bang-bangs her head against a wall — are meant to obscure her hard-charging ambition and smarts. This at least appears to be the chewy nougat at the center of Aline Brosh McKenna’s soft, sticky screenplay, which the director Roger Michell makes gooier at every turn. Maybe it works if you haven’t seen “Broadcast News,” James L. Brooks’s 1987 comedy about a romantic triangle (Holly Hunter, William Hurt and Albert Brooks) on the front lines in the network battle between fluff and news.

Fluff has already won, in one way or another, by the time “Morning Glory” opens (as it had by the time “Broadcast News” did too). Becky is working as a producer on a New Jersey morning television show, rising before the dawn to spread her light and warmth on her loving colleagues. But all is not well, at least for the ruthlessly mechanical, zippy minutes between her losing her job in New Jersey and landing a choicer gig in New York, courtesy of a semi-skeptical executive (a buttery smooth Jeff Goldblum) with a last-place morning show. Before you know it, Becky is skipping to work in her Louboutins (she might just make it after all!) and bringing the perky to the misery that is “Daybreak.”

A show populated by a sitcom-style company of the happy, slap-happy and just plain goofy, “Daybreak” represents one of those fantasy work families in which few people do much visible labor. Instead they crack wise and snipe at one another, tossing half-witticisms across meeting tables like overgrown sweathogs lobbing spitballs. One of the film’s smartest moves is that it waits until Becky lands in New York to prove to you just how good she is at her job, which she does by silencing the rabble with rapid-fire orders and deadly seriousness on her first day. She also fires one of the hosts, earning a round of applause from everyone, save fans of “Lost” who might be sorry to see one of its cast members go.

J.J. Abrams, who was one of the creators of “Lost” and directed last year’s smart reboot of “Star Trek,” helped produce “Morning Glory.” It’s a bummer that any given episode in a network show like “Lost,” even at its most muddled, was tighter and conveyed greater respect for the audience’s intelligence (even as, yes, it tested your everlasting patience) than the entirety of “Morning Glory.” Ms. McKenna, who adapted “The Devil Wears Prada” for the screen, arms this script with laugh-out-loud lines, only to undercut them with soggy filler involving Becky’s romance with another producer, Adam (Patrick Wilson), and her equally suspense-free relationship with her reluctant new anchor, the gruff and boozy Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford). The bland wall-to-wall pop songs — see Becky dress, cue “New Shoes” — drum the obvious home.

Photo

Harrison Ford and Rachel McAdams in a scene from “Morning Glory,” which is set in New York.Credit
Macall Polay/Paramount Pictures

A few of Mr. Michell’s previous films, notably “The Mother” and “Enduring Love,” have had bite, unlike “Morning Glory,” which is so insistently, at times desperately, upbeat that it feels strung out on a cocktail of antidepressants and bad test-audience results. It’s impossible to know how much responsibility a director of an industrial entertainment like this bears for the obnoxious soundtrack or requisite rom-com montage sequence (probably not much), but, as he has before, Mr. Michell does find a groove with his actors. Mr. Ford slides into his grumpy old newsman role as easily as Mike downs his Scotch, his features ossified into the exasperated weariness of the superior. The character, like Diane Keaton’s prickly co-anchor, is nothing other than a sentimental bait-and-switch, but such is their point and purpose.

As might be expected, Ms. McAdams plays her role exceptionally well: as the young actress on the verge of the big time, who can win the boy, tame the beast, flash her panties and make you smile without making you cringe, she is a natural. Now, if she can just persuade Mr. Abrams to give her a role worthy of them both. More than 20 years ago, Holly Hunter played an unapologetically smart female professional with a quiver full of comebacks: “It must be nice,” her boss says “to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.”